Recently, hydrogen has attracted attention as replicable fuel in place of petroleum from point views of starvation of natural resources such as petroleum and the greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide.
Today, as such a method of producing hydrogen, 90% of industry-use hydrogen is produced from petroleum or natural gas by a steam reforming method or a partial oxidizing method.
As methods of producing hydrogen other than these methods, methods in which coal is used as crude material (COG method or the producer gasifying method), a method of collecting by-product hydrogen from a common salt electrolyzer, a method of electrolysis of water and the like have conventionally been done.
Furthermore, recently, a thermochemical producing method or a method of producing hydrogen using sunlight have been studied.
As a method of producing hydrogen other than the methods described above, for example, there is a method of producing hydrogen by thermally decomposing water. This method requires a reaction temperature of 1500° C. at the minimum and carrying out a reaction under a high temperature of 4300° C. in order to increase a decomposition rate of water into hydrogen in which an energy consumption is large, which is not practical except that a low cost power source is available.
On the other hand, there is also a possible method in which alkaline-earth metals such as sodium, potassium, and manganese are doped into water and these metals are caused to chemically react with water. However, these metals are relatively expensive, and it is difficult to utilize these chemical reactions because these reactions are severe.
Furthermore, instead of water used in the method of electrolysis of water, electrolysis with hydrocarbon such as methanol can be considered. Hydrocarbon has a relatively low bonding energy between hydrogen and carbon within a molecule, so that voltage differences necessary for these electrolyses are low, but accompanied with generation of by-products such as CO and CO2 as reaction products, which requires a countermeasure for decomposing and removal of these products.
Furthermore, the inventors have promoted a study regarding an active structure capable of producing hydrogen in which hydrogen is freed from hydrogen bonds in water or hydrocarbon without externally applying energy.
As a hydrogen activating apparatus for producing hydrogen, an apparatus and a method disclosed in a U.S. Patent are known (for example, see U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,794 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,419,815). This apparatus is constructed such that at least one pair of electrodes are immerged in water in a container containing the water in such a condition that the electrodes are made close to each other with respect to a distance therebetween, wherein when pulse electric power is applied between the electrodes, orthohydrogen (generating heat of combustion which is larger than that of parahydrogen) is produced, and when pulse electric power is supplied to a coil arranged at an upper part of water in addition of applying the pulse electric power between the electrodes, the parahydrogen is produced.
In this hydrogen activating apparatus, an input power is 12V×300 mA (a low voltage×a high current), and bubbles of oxygen and hydrogen are produced at the middle between the electrode plates though its principle has not been disclosed. In other words, it is described that water can be decomposed.
However, in the case of using the pulse of 12 V with 300 mA, when a current of 300 mA is conducted through the electrode plates, a decomposition action of water occurs due to the current which is similar to that occurs in the electrolysis. In other words, the power consumption becomes large.
Furthermore, when water is subject to electrolysis, to improve the electric conductivity of the solution, generally, electrolyte such as alkali metal (NaOH, KOH, or the like) is doped to increase a current density, so that a running cost regarding medicine is high.
Then, if water is subject to electrolysis without doping electrolyte, with utilizing super pure water as water, an amount of produced hydrogen becomes low and the cost is high. On the other hand, if service water, which is cheap and harmless, is used, it is difficult to efficiently utilize water because the current density at the electrodes cannot be made high.
The present invention is provided to solve the above-described problems and aims to provide a hydrogen activating apparatus which can produce hydrogen from a substance containing hydrogen atoms such as water or hydrogen-containing organic compound with low energy and which requires no dopant of electrolyte or the like into water to improve an electric conductivity.